Inhalt des Dokuments

Torsten Betz

Research topic

I'm interested in how our beliefs about the world shape our perception of it. In general, visual input is ambiguous, but we usually arrive at one coherent interpretation. In order to achieve this, the brain has to impose additional constraints on its perceptual interpretations. To discover these constraints I use a combination of psychophysical measurements and computational modeling. On one hand, psychophysics can tell us how observers perceive the world based on controlled stimulation. On the other, modeling can make explicit the kinds of assumptions upon which the brain relies in order to arrive at its perceptual conclusions. I am particularly interested in the functional role that cortical feedback plays in this context, and in the constraints that it puts on what we can and cannot perceive.